america when they burned down america in two thousand and eight the banks toure's bush gave them billions but when the poor revolt these were all the revolutions of the rich from the from the reagans that's when the poor were involved it's pretty hard to miss strikers were being killed in the us in the eighty's that all the way up to the one nine hundred thirty s. until it was outlawed one hundred thirty five of the wagner act and columbia right now strikers are being are being murdered poor people were burning ghettos in the sixty's and seventy's and dead students and unemployed people occupy movements all across the country our country was birthed in revolution jefferson's quote about blood and patriots is not appropriate for today we need to we need to find a new way and occupy something that's coming up the campaign against corporate personhood scored significant victories this week but where do we go from here just a moment. that drives the world of fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions it's

going to break through get through it if you have made who can you trust no one who is your view and with the local machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more. it's.

all about the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour we might be one step closer to reclaiming the words we the people and you could think of for fine people of boulder colorado for that this week's edition of geeky science you might be surprised to find out that much of your life is predestined by the time you're seven years old and yes it really is in your genes and they can change and finally health care in america is a cancer that's making a very small group richer than the ryle the streams and leaving the rest of us to deal with the fallout there is a solution to what it is and it's really just. another voters in boulder colorado overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment this is corporations are not people where is the robot

against corporate personhood go next for more on this growing movement to strip corporations of personhood i'm joined by kate was a supposed belknap of with move to amend or caitlin welcome i sound thanks so much for having me on thanks for joining us how did it go in denver this week. tell her it was great our ballot initiative which was a ballot initiative resolution so older citizens were deciding whether or not we should have a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood and declare that money is not speech that's what they were being asked builded seventy four percent is that or about constitutional amendment that's absolute spectacular we received a picture from occupy oakland i think you've seen it it's showing our screen right now and you know it's like you know it's basically and corporate personhood and this is occupy oakland there's nothing on the ballot in oakland about corporate personhood the idea of this ban is really going to national isn't. be built signs

are everywhere there at occupy is all over the country we've been getting tons of orders instead of why we need them as our folks were asking for something that they could carry to show their support or move to the net and now you have a new campaign or not a newly emerging campaign but there's going to be another vote next week next on the campaign this is missoula montana great unless unless the money can spell it is basically the same being as older and building building on tuesday and that's this is basically new to them and strategy to go to communities around the country with local organizers folks on the ground are volunteers who stepped forward and say that they want to work on similar campaigns and our thinking is that we will be able to drive from the ground up this amendment into lushington because right now congress is totally controlled by corporations so we can't look to congress to solve this problem for us here at the push it through so washington ourselves or at

least largely controlled seems like there's still a few holdouts. but they are few and far between how has occupied wall street lit a fire under the move to amend movement. well i think i must be and move to amend our amazing synergy we were so thrilled to see folks in new york in just such big numbers and we were even more thrilled when it started coming out that one of their mean to me and one of the mean signs you were seeing one of the mean. discussions that the general assembly were all about abolishing person and i mean that's totally ired and so we're getting we're occupiers all over the country letting us know that they're supporting the call for an amendment for a constitutional amendment. that's right now six democratic senators just be introduced amendment into a piano members of the constitution of the senate it doesn't go as far as as you're

suggesting and as i suggested in my book on equal protection it doesn't say corporations are people but it does essentially say money is not speech you would roll back the bill oddie decision the first national bank decision and a good chunk of citizens united in that regard what are your thoughts on that. if you look in the right direction to be sure and it's exciting to see that there are some in washington that are hearing that people ought but really we believe this is the key moment and it's really critical that we get out rate because if an amendment that isn't able to rock why not those who are free that will do the end of the discussion and will have to muster up all the explanation to explain why that doesn't go far enough workers the hurt is not just about money in elections to be sure that is a big part of it but corporations are also able to overturn democratically. laws that protect labor rates that protect the environment that protect communities rights and until we get rid of corporate personhood the idea that operations have

rights of human beings under the constitution we're not going to really be able to get under corporations under our control so we believe we have minimal needs if not some you know as the moment we're encouraged to see it but we don't want folks to misunderstand this moment where really the american people are calling for something further and we need our lawmakers to respond and have a systemic solution to the up it seems the corporations are claiming first memorised interfere in politics which this intimate addresses the one from these senators but they're also coming forth moments rights and privacy for the memories against taking any and so often criminalization going back to tobacco and asparagus fourteenth amendment rights against discrimination so that wal-mart's and toxic waste sites can you see that whatever they want and the really the whole thing needs to needs to be taken on so how do people watching at home who want to not just give the money out of politics which is fine i mean is the start but how do

people who really want to get up there at the core cancer here rather than just the metastases around it get involved. but don't move to amend that org we have a local auction we have affiliates around the country and more coming on every single week and we were really serious about grassroots democracy so it's important to us for our canteen and our organization so the from the bottom up as well as the movement that we're building and there are many that were calling for us so folks can get involved in their community and become chapters in their town and work on resolutions like they passed in boulder and like we're sure will pass next week in missoula lightly passed in madison wisconsin and county in april and we have dozens of other communities there right now collecting signatures to be on the ballot next year and so anyone who wants to can join in and actually next week we'll have house parties around the country over two hundred and house parties happening where folks

are getting together to start planning what kind of action they want to do in their communities to respond to the second anniversary of citizens united which is january twenty first and we just today but out of the car for january twentieth to be a nationwide occupy that or so in federal courts across the country and at the supreme court they're going to be moved to amend both letting their fellow community members know who it is that controls our country and one of the mechanisms that they give us is the court system so we'd love you to join us if you want to join us at the supreme court on january twentieth we'd love to have you and there might even be opportunities for civil disobedience we're trying to figure out what exactly to do but it's time to really take ratcheted up our country is with us and we just need to lead the way time to occupy the courts that's great thanks so much for being with us thank you so much and move to amend or check it out corporate

personhood is the issue of our time we continue to bring you the latest developments in the move to handle marc receive back to we have people and you can do your part to go to by going to move to amanda. it's just. it's the good the bad of the very holler cryptically ugly the good steve murphy the democratic strategist who often plays the role of sacrificial lamb on the sean hannity show stepped up last night and called out an idiot for what he is a conservative propagandist after hannity praised himself as being one of the few voices in the media to hype the president obama bill ayers connection murphy spoke up to disagree. but you know the due diligence wasn't done would do or what barack obama you know what i mean this guy was was it was you know that he has like sitting back so you know they're not listening to hannity but in the media right

back where i mean you're going to not don't why they're going why are you why this isn't a media i just. because i get to show this is in the movie. yeah exactly we're here and what are you doing here to get into the lab i want to live really probably get the job you're like out here you know i mean he asked i can't want to turn it off i'm not whining like obama. i think it's fair to say murph you want me and so i did back for a while but hey getting a chance to tell a little truth on g.o.p. t.v. also knows fox so-called news well worth well done the bad progress when jeff duncan republican from south carolina was speaking with students in a q. and a and delivered this disturbing analogy to highlight our nation's immigration problems congressman duncan said it's kind of like having a house sticking the door off the hinges and allowing any kind of vagrant or animal or just somebody that's hungry or somebody who wants to do your dishes for you to come in and you can say no you can't come in and you can't say no you can stay all night or you know you can't have this benefit using my deodorant. illegal

immigration the same thing as animal sneaking into your house doing your dishes and using your deodorant anyone else have the same problems with under. undocumented immigrants. some i didn't think so and a very very ugly congressman tom price a republican from georgia went on g.o.p. t.v. fox so-called news this morning and was asked some surprisingly tough questions about why republicans are focused on passing bills to reaffirm the in god we trust as need national motto and not passing bills to create jobs or is price defended the in god we trust. for the resolution was necessary because we felt it was appropriate to remind the president what in fact the motto of our great what you're not saying he's against religion there is no suggestion in there there was no suggestion that i had absolutely not it was it was an opportunity to say you know

mr president the motto of this country is not a poor of us and of it's same god we trust actually our founding fathers if we wrote the constitution always that they've made the motto of this country the poor will see it out of many want it was changed during the cold war to in god we trust to distinguish us from the so called god was on i guess republicans want to reaffirm the motto to distinguish themselves from president obama must be a god will socialist or a kenyan muslim or whatever bogeyman republicans have chosen for the week all in all it was a waste of time it didn't create a single job and it was very very . eight years ago in my book the edison gene i wrote a chapter describing how

a mothers stress during pregnancy uses a feedback loop based on the hormone cortisol to tell a fetus to reduce the brain's intellectual development and increase the size of the brain's fight or flight areas i speculated that this may even have an epigenetic effect it may affect future generations by changing d.n.a. or the way d.n.a. is expressed now comes the proof and international study that was published in the international journal of epidemiology last week as found that a person's environment in utero and during their early childhood years influences brain and biological development and leaves a nehmer in the genetic code that affects the way genes function the findings could prove major evidence as to provide major evidence as to why the health problems known to be associated with low socio economic status including obesity mental health problems heart disease diabetes and other chronic illnesses can last a lifetime even if persons living conditions improve later in life the scientists

looked at what's called d.n.a. methylation a chemical change in specific genes it's linked to lasting changes in the way those genes function basically methylation of a gene is a specific and at any particular point in that d.n.a. reduces the activity of the gene and this is what leads to the potential health risks the team focused on a small sample forty min from an ongoing british cohort study which has followed ten thousand people born in march of one nine hundred fifty eight from birth onward the team looked at the d.n.a. of men aged forty five who came from one of two economic extremes children whose fathers were unskilled workers and children's whose the ads were company c.e.o.'s and oxford or cambridge university graduates and looking at control areas of twenty thousand genes the researchers found twice as many just genetic differences in the group that was brought up in wealthy. confort compared to the group that was raised

in poor living conditions this led them to make the link between the economics of early life and the biochemistry of d.n.a. other than proving that your environment during the critical developmental years in early childhood has a direct impact on your overall health for life the study also shows the d.n.a. is highly adaptable does not remain the same from generation to generation these epigenetic changes are the biological imbedding of memories in genes works both ways so if we're able to reverse poverty and have generations of people living in relative peace and security we can bring about a positive change and a permanent change in genetics they could define a new era for human beings that old saying it's in my genes have to be updated for two it's in my genes for now coming up in tonight's daily take i'll tell you why americans are apparently all really truly insane.

i'm learning this. your take my take is the segment of the show when we answer your questions comments

criticisms and opinions heard here on the big picture our viewer comments a night is from the message board over tom harkin dot com wayne recently wrote lobbying should be abolished and the best way to do that is to amend our system to allow each and every american citizen the right to vote on every piece of legislation that is presented in congress i don't think a lobbyist could pay every qualified american citizen to vote their way maybe it could be named something like the national referendum system we have a vote by mail system here in oregon and it works great for you to voters and for prior to the election the planes the pros and cons of an issue are valid as mail directly to our home we can look over the pros and cons of the proposals and decide how to vote in the privacy of our own and send our ballot back by mail or and deliver it a polling place and being turned away or taken off the list strictly private and personal which is how it should be stated oregon does a good job of handling our voting system there's no reason individual states could not handle a national system of petitioning and voting by mail it would also be

a win for the postal service i buy some extra stamps for that purpose our representatives could present our petitions and they could agree the issues in congress all they want the final vote would be cast by we the people that would be a true majority. well wayne what you're describing is what's called direct democracy they had a variation on a large variation out in greece three thousand years ago it took six thousand one people to show up for there to be a quorum for there for a decision to be made and people were selected to show up for that basically by a lottery system sort of a jury duty in fact if you didn't show up when your name came up you were called an audio to the origin of the word idiot we have here in the united states on the founders and framers of the constitution put together the constitution they had looked at that they said well it's kind of cool but you know it really won't work let's have a representative democracy actually what we have is a constitutionally limited represent who don't want democratic republic so

basically in a representative democracy we hired people to pay attention to the laws and if there's a piece of legislation you know four hundred page bill and it's going to take it's going to be a lot to it i basically want to hire somebody to take the hours of the days the months that's going to take to read that and think about all the possible ramifications to work out the details i don't have time to do it and neither do you . now and that way through the representative democracy we're basically trusting those people to do the right thing and if they screw up or they do the wrong thing or proves that they're corrupt we have this recall system called elections every two years in the house of representatives every six and senate for years the president would kick the bums up now what you're describing are ballot initiatives citizens' referendums twenty four states have them most of them date back to the progressive era the early one thousand nine hundred really to your early years of the twentieth century and it's become actually a very big problem in oregon for example we had

a ballot initiative for what's called the kicker it's an incredibly stupid idea what it says is if there is a surplus any year in the state or any two years because it's a two year cycle if there's a surplus then the state has to write checks and send the money back to the people and no possibility of a rainy day fund this was sold to us by a bunch of rich people in in oregon and you know who basically wanted you know large tax payers who wanted to get their money back and what it did is it wiped out or going to left us with no rainy day fund and that's the problem with the right kind of democracy if you've got interests who can spend millions of dollars convincing average people to vote a stupid way it often happens it happened in california with prop fourteen years ago i frankly want representative democracy but i wanted an influence by special interests that requires a member of the constitution that says money is not speech corporations are people get out of the electoral process and let's have real representatives again and for that go to move to him and. that's it for your take my take tonight if you like

your comments and questions here in the segment the big picture listen up. we want to know your to send us your comments but visiting the tom harkin facebook page but twittering that tom underscore when you're in the champ room on the message board you through the blog at thom hartmann dot com you can also leave a message on the ramp line at two two five three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off it's all welcome to remember that your comments may be used on the year. we're insane if you think about the way our nation administers health care we really are truly insane the state of vermont is trying to be the first state in the country to set up a state wide single payer health care system health care system that will cover everyone and a health care system that according to a new report by two different nonpartizan nonpolitical government agencies will

save vermont up to one point eight billion dollars over the next decade that's right a single payer health care system will cover more people everybody in fact and be one point eight billion dollars cheaper the way it works is that there's only one insurance company in the state that provides basic health care everybody in the state pays into it and it covers every medical bill in the state it is the state no need for doctors to fill out forms from ten different insurance companies no insurance companies trying to avoid pain bills because this is tim is designed to pay the bills and because it's run by the state it's answerable to the people and it doesn't pay its c.e.o. is the hundreds of millions of dollars that leeches like steven j. emsley of united health care essentially steal from their customers this is the single payer system that most of the rest of the developed world has adopted and why they all now spend far less than we do on health care and they get better health care results. so why is from on the only state close to adopting

a single payer system why doesn't every state have single payer systems that are cheaper and cover more people why doesn't our entire country have such a system apparently because we're insane for some insane reason we've decided it's better to divert billions of dollars away from healing sick people and instead move their money toward financing multimillion dollar homes for health insurance c.e.o.'s. c.e.o. of united health group stephen helmsley is salary three point two million down is the incredible gross profits of the private health insurance industry that is at the core of the problem the sealed thing and the handling of the annual revenue nineteen point one trillion dollars two hundred ninety two million dollars in net income his salary twelve point two million dollars for some insane reason we've decided it's better to turn six if

a certain c.e.o.'s of health insurance corporations and a multi millionaires and billionaires rather than using that money to hire more doctors hire more nurses or build more community clinics as the former c.e.o. of united healthcare bill mcguire made one point six billion dollars he's a billionaire health insurance executive in a country where fifty three million americans don't have health insurance or more than forty million americans are on food stamps where one in three african-american children are living in poverty so it makes sense to anyone for some insane reason we've decided billions are better spent on administrative costs to hire armies of number crunchers because sauer medical records and deny you and me people with a guy who are maybe people with preexisting conditions life saving medical treatment these are the for profit health insurance companies death panels. why spend billions on for profit death panels and we can spend the same amount of money

just giving people the surgery or the medicines that they need to keep living a typical for profit health insurance corporation devotes thirty one percent of its revenue toward overhead stuff like paperwork c.e.o. salaries and death panels but a single payer system like medicare only has a three percent overhead and with our federal government and state governments going bankrupt because a story medical costs it's insane to keep in place a system where one out of every three dollars spent on health care goes towards more mcmansion is for people like dollar bill mcguire our health care system has itself become a cancer on america you know if you had a blood sucking leech on your back that was sucking air dry and you didn't do anything about it you just left it there to feast you can say it that's exactly what we let for profit health insurance executives do suck us dry leave us sick all

so they can just get fatter and fatter and fatter the state of vermont is working to knock these bloodsucking leaches off their back and it's past time for the rest of the nation to do the same thing i healthcare system should not exist to turn people into millionaires and billionaires like it does here in the united states and should exist to make sure that everyone has access to basic health care which is considered a human right in every other developed country in the world it exists so that health care can be delivered at the lowest possible cost with the best possible quality and goal is hard to achieve of people of dollar bill mcguire are constantly skim into that cash off the top exist so that we're all healthier so that we can avoid disease outbreaks so that we can all be more productive and all raise better families live healthy and available to make this nation a better place. a single payer system is the best way to achieve this as we've seen in the examples of countries all over the world and we'd be insane if we didn't all

start putting working to put one into place in america right now is the slogan to progressive democrats of america p.t. america better world grows health care not warfare pass it on. as the big picture for more on the stories we covered visit our website that's part of a speech or. as a check out or to youtube channels or looks at rome hartman dot com this entire show is also available for free video podcast on i tunes and we have a free trial part of i phone or i pad app in the app store you sent us feedback on twitter a tom underscore our facebook tom others for our blogs message boards and telephone . and don't forget democracy begins when you show begins when you participate get out there get active occupy something. your it will sort of not.

a very warm welcome to you this is your news today protesters on the. streets they have. the chance to use it to get the status of the human experiments. we've seen this rap music awards exposed facility since the early clooney and his song changelings us find. the reason to me to put it in hmong kids and make you want. to be. recession look even the nation's close to collapsing is. something else we play thanks again feel like thing is us crash smashed.